Yearning for Understanding with Dr. Robert Lawrence Kuhn (Part 2 of 2)

This episode is the second part of the conversation between Brandon Vaidyanathan and Robert Lawrence Kuhn.

Dr. Robert Lawrence Kuhn is the creator, writer, host and executive producer of Closer To Truth, the long-running PBS/public television series and leading global resource on Cosmos (cosmology/physics, philosophy of science), Life (philosophy of biology), Mind (consciousness, brain/mind, philosophy of mind), and Meaning (theism/atheism/agnosticism, global philosophy of religion, critical thinking). 

Kuhn has written or edited over 30 books, including The Mystery of Existence: Why is there Anything At All? (with John Leslie); Closer To Truth: Challenging Current Belief; Closer To Truth: Science, Meaning and the Future; The Library of Investment Banking; How China’s Leaders Think (featuring President Xi Jinping); The Man Who Changed China: The Life and Legacy of Jiang Zemin (China’s best-selling book in 2005 and in December 2022); and "The Origin and Significance of Zero: An Interdisciplinary Perspective” (with Peter Gobets).

An international corporate strategist and investment banker, Dr. Kuhn is a recipient of the China Reform Friendship Medal and is a frequent commentator in the international media and Chinese media. 

Kuhn’s comprehensive review article on consciousness – “A Landscape of Consciousness: Toward a Taxonomy of Explanations and Implications” – is published in Progress in Biophysics and Molecular Biology (August 2024), and is considered the most comprehensive article written on the landscape of consciousness theories. 

Dr. Kuhn is chairman of The Kuhn Foundation. He has a BA in Human Biology (Johns Hopkins), PhD in Anatomy/Brain Research (UCLA), and SM (MBA) in Management (MIT).

In this second part of our conversation, we talk about:

• The Landscape of Consciousness article, which develops a comprehensive taxonomy of theories of consciousness
• The value of loving the questions more than seeking certainty
• The humility of acknowledging the limits of one's own beliefs
• The impact of Closer to Truth

To learn more about Robert, you can find him at:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/robert-lawrence-kuhn-4b893221
Closer to Truth: https://closertotruth.com/
Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@CloserToTruthTV/videos
Apple Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/closer-to-truth/id411527781
A Landscape of Consciousness: Toward a taxonomy of explanations and implications: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/38281544/
The Mystery of Existence: Why Is There Anything At All?: https://a.co/d/izIoY8I
Why anything? Why this? by Derek Parfit: https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v20/n02/derek-parfit/why-anything-why-this

This episode is sponsored by:
John Templeton Foundation (https://www.templeton.org/)
Templeton Religion Trust (https://templetonreligiontrust.org/)

Transcript

(preview)
Brandon: I wrote back, and I wrote back very long response to all the different things which are very helpful and said, "If I were you in your position, I would say exactly the same thing. I would say it's not relevant to biophysics and molecular biology. But I'm in a position now where I'm going to do this once in my life, this landscape of consciousness. And I have to do it to where I feel satisfied and I feel comfortable. And what I feel comfortable with is giving the totality of human thinking on the nature of consciousness. I will explore every area of human thinking to the best of my ability.

(intro)

Brandon: I'm Brandon Vaidyanathan, and this is Beauty at Work — the podcast that seeks to expand our understanding of beauty, what it is, how it works, and why it matters for the work we do. This season of the podcast is sponsored by John Templeton Foundation and Templeton Religion Trust.

Hey, everyone. This is the second half of my conversation with Robert Lawrence Kuhn, host of Closer to Truth. Please check out the first part if you haven't already.

(interview)

Brandon: You've just written this remarkable, new article on the Landscape of Consciousness published in the Progress in Biophysics & Molecular Biology. Is it 175,000 words? That's longer than most books I've read. It reviews more than 200 theories. One reviewer rightly called it the most comprehensive article on the landscape of theories of consciousness and recent memory. Could you say a little bit about the article? What led you to develop it, and how it's structured?

Robert: Sure. This is a project I would have never imagined I would have done. It's something I always sort of wanted to do like Closer to Truth. But writing an article is very different than doing interviews and television, because interviews and television is very forgiving. I can say something wrong, and it really doesn't matter. Because you're getting a personal feeling, and we're having a great conversation. So if I get something a little bit wrong, it doesn't really matter. When you put words on paper, especially in a scientific sense, every word counts and every word is permanent. And so I always had the vision, I wanted to take my thinking about two kinds of questions. One is the nature of consciousness, which is a massive intellectual project that has tens of thousands of papers and ideas, and the nature of existence. Why is there something rather than nothing? I was able to do the second. Let me give you a little background there. Because both emerging from Closer to Truth. On Closer to Truth, I met one of my heroes. I had a number of people whose ideas I wanted to build Closer to Truth about. One of them was John Leslie, who's a British Canadian philosopher, famously developed the theory of the importance of value called axiology of philosophy. He dealt very much with the idea of, why is there anything at all? And so John, when Peter Getzels and I first began doing in 2006, when Stephen Weinberg agreed to a certain time play, John was my next call. I say, "John, can you come to California and pay your way? We really want to get this right." He came during that time period. And so John was the second or third we interviewed during that period. He and I became very good friends, very close. After then Closer to Truth week, we wanted to do — we did a book together, and it is sitting right here. It's called The Mystery of Existence: Why Is There Anything at All? That's John and myself, published by Wiley-Blackwell. We can put it here.

Brandon: Yeah.

Robert: And that was a very profound experience to do that. I wrote a couple of articles within that. John did a lot of the writing, of course, of the material. We worked it together. It was a great experience but a lot of work. I'm very pleased to have done it. I always had the feeling that I'd like to do something like that unconsciousness, but it was so forbidding that I didn't think realistically I would ever do it. Because again, it's words on paper. The main paper I did — I did two papers for that book — one is maybe 8,000 words, and one is maybe 4,000 words. They took an enormous amount of work. One is about different theories of how the universe came about. The other is what I call 'levels of nothing,' which describe nine different ways of describing nothing. That was a fairly short article, but it took a massive amount of work. In brain and mind, I really thought I would never do it. We've done a huge amount of interviews on Closer to Truth, but that's a very different kind of experience. That I'm asking questions, getting people to get comments.

Then in the late 2022, somebody who knew me from Closer to Truth, Professor John Torday of UCLA, wrote to me and said that he's on the board of the Journal Progress in Biophysics and Molecular Biology. They were thinking about doing a special issue on consciousness with a focus on quantum consciousness from a biological point of view. Fits their motive. He wondered if I would write an introductory article for it to give sort of the overview of consciousness as the first article in this special issue. And as soon as he said that, I panicked because I knew the amount of work that it would take. Parenthetical thought: what I panicked about the work that it would take is literally less than 5 % of the work that it eventually took. I mean, literally. I'm not saying 5%. I'm saying literally. But even that little bit, I panicked and said, "I can't do it. I don't have the time." I mean, literally, I didn't have any time. There's all the things I do. Then I had this feeling that if I don't do it now, I will never do it ever. And so I agreed. I think I agreed in February, four or five months later, to do it. I just scared myself. I have this major file on all the papers I've used in landscape of conscious, developed. There are like 2,000 different documents, more than a thousand of which are drafts of the final paper as it grew. I looked back at the very first one I did in March of 2023, and it had like 8,000 words. But it was a jumble of ideas and stuff I've taken from different players, just a nonsensical jumble of 8,000 words. It became more than a passion. It became an obsession to do it right. I give the journal of Biophysics and Molecular Biology credit for two reasons. One is on the first review, which was in June of 2023 after I wrote intensely for three or four months. It was like 55,000 words at that point. The reviewer was anonymous, said the science was great. He or she offered suggestions which were very helpful. One theory I had underplayed, one I had not included. Also, he suggested language as an area, which I had rejected and other philosophers would reject too as being relevant for consciousness. But the arguments he made were legitimate. Then I added that whole section. So he made some really good suggestions on the article, as well as giving it a very high grade to be published. But then he said, "Look. the philosophy and theology sections that is in this paper are not of interest to the readers of biophysics and molecular biology. So I would suggest you take it out. I wrote back, and I wrote back very long response to all the different things which are very helpful and said, "If I were you in your position, I would say exactly the same thing. I would say it's not relevant to biophysics and molecular biology. But I'm in a position now where I'm going to do this once in my life, this landscape of consciousness. And I have to do it to where I feel satisfied and I feel comfortable. And what I feel comfortable with is giving the totality of human thinking on the nature of consciousness. I will explore every area of human thinking to the best of my ability, to put myself into each theory and each idea as if it were mine and what I passionately believe in order to express that. I want to inhabit each of these theories and the deep philosophy and the theology and all the different theologies. Because we have Hinduism, Buddhism, Judaism, Christianity, Islam and indigenous religions from Africa and then from China. I want to have the totality of human thinking with the best thinking of this. And if you don't want to publish it, I understand. If I were you, I would not publish it in your journal. But they came back and they said, you know, we'll accept it. No cuts were made. So I'll give them credit for that.

The reviewer also said that this should be a book and that was 55,000 words. Not what it turned out. 175,000. He said this should be a book rather than an article or paper in this journal. I said, I'm wrestling with that. But I really want it to be a scientific paper for several reasons. If it's a book, I'm going to have to make it sort of popular and tell stories. I can do that. I mean, I do that on Closer to Truth. I'd do that. But that's not what I want to do here. I want to tell a rigorous story about each one to make it as a living document. And a book is a permanent thing. It's now permanent. That's not what this is. It's a living document. I want interaction. I ask for reader feedback. We'll make changes in it because it is an ongoing organic process, and I wanted to express that. So for those reasons, I said I do not want to do this as a book. Because that gives it the wrong character, and it would change how I approach the thing. So, it's very organic. As it turned out, they did not do this special issue on quantum consciousness for whatever reason. But the article was published in June. It was 142 pages.

Brandon: I mean it's, yeah, I think it's a formidable work. I think it's super important for scholars in a range of fields. Also, the structure of it, I think, is especially compelling. The kinds of taxonomies you've built are really helpful in terms of thinking through how do you catalog these variety of theories. Could you say a little bit about the structure? You had mentioned just before we were talking that there's a particular beauty to the structure that you find. I'd love to hear about that.

Robert: Absolutely right. I had two interests in doing the paper. One is to gather all the theories of humanity. Now, you can never do all. But the conceit was I wanted to get every one of significance or that passed some artificial test, the arbitrary test of rationality but to keep an open mind not excluding anything. There's something called an Overton window in politics. That says how much, how far can a politician go to make radical statements without losing credibility and looking like a like a crackpot? That's called an Overton window. And so my Overton window for consciousness was broader than others, perhaps other scientists or with scientific background in the field. I still have limits. I mean, I get thousands of theories, literally hundreds of theories sent to me, which I don't include. It's an arbitrary sense of, it doesn't mean it's right. It means it has some special nature, or it has a uniqueness, or it has a feature that I find interesting or compelling. So I wanted to gather all of those together — that was part one — as much as I could.

Second part is to organize it into some kind of way of thinking. Now, any kind of taxonomy, especially something that's one dimensional on paper, is going to be artificial. I mean, that's correct. The world is not created by systematic thinking about stuff. The world is the world. And so anything is arbitrary. But in order to give this structure, I wanted to have a structure that made sense to me and that conveyed ideas in its own right. And so the first cut you would do is very simple. It's materialism, physicalism where only the physical is real, and things that are not physical and not material. Now, that seems simple, but it's not. Because there's a lot of grey stuff in the middle. So materialism theories termed physicalism is used. There's a slight difference in meaning. Materialism can mean sort of like the stuff, and physicalism can mean like the process and there's naturalism. But materialism was the historical term, so I've used that as the primary idea. There are many different kinds of theories. Now, when you go to this process, when you have a physical theory and that's all there is, then by explaining consciousness, it's complicated. Because you have to explain consciousness. If you have a non-physical theory — we can describe what that means — it's less complicated because there's not much progress you can make. Because if it's non-physical, then the scientific methodology is going to break down at some point. You still should have a scientific way of thinking which is a rationality to the approach. But the classic scientific method of experimentation or observation, replicability, people finding the same thing is not going to be present. And so, therefore, if you're in a non-physical, you can't make much progress beyond your non-physical, non-material theory. That's your theory, but you can't take it much further. With a materialistic thing, you can take it but you have to explain it. So that enabled, by that reasoning in these two categories, materialistic theories are, I looked at them and I had something over 100 of different kinds of theories. I tried to organize it in some structure under materialistic theories. Again, it's arbitrary, but I came up with 10 categories under materialism, philosophical theories, which are theories that are based on philosophical reasoning as the primary aspect of it such as John Searle's biological naturalism, David Papineau's identity theory, radical identity theory. Many, many philosophers have very structured net blocks of biological naturalism. So that was one.

Second big category, neurobiological theories, that's where everything is the primary activity is neurobiological. Then just go quickly electromagnetic theories, computational information theories, homeostatic and effective theories of motion embodied in inactive theories, which is a whole different area, and then theories of relationships and then representational theories, single order, higher order, language relationships. Then phylogenetic evolution is a large category, but almost everything can be fit very nicely into these different ways of thinking. They're not necessarily mutually exclusive, although everybody seems to think their theory is what consciousness is, which I like. I like everybody to be passionate and really believing their theory. Again, when I wrote each one and each theory I did, I mean, I would spend a full day or a full night. I should note that Landscape was written largely at night because I have day responsibilities, but I would write from 9, 10 at night till 4, 5, 6, sometimes 7 in the morning. That activity was probably almost a year's worth of that type of life. It was a very strenuous and difficult time, but it was very exhilarating. I literally, for every theory, put myself into it as if that were the only theory. Like with Gerald Edelman's neural Darwinism and recurrent — I mean, I knew about that in the past, but I spent a day and a half on that. I really wrote it as if I were reincarnating Gerald himself. And so that was the materialism theories.

Then the non-material theories, I mean, we have the obvious ones like psychism, dualisms, monisms, idealisms. Those are the sort of the non-physical things, each one having its own structure and interesting people making very different approaches to it. Then there were a number of theories that are different. Certainly, non-reductive physicalism is a physicalistic theory. But non-reductive kind of changes its character because physicalism, by its very characteristic, should be reductive. I mean, that's hard. And if it's non-reductive, what does that mean in terms of—

Brandon: Some kind of emergence.

Robert: Yeah, but the emergence would have to be a strong emergence, not a weak emergence. A weak emergence is just something that you just don't know. It's an epistemological issue as opposed to an ontological issue. But non-reductive physicalism is an ontological claim. The way I look at it is fundamental. If it's an epistemological claim, then it's just scientific knowledge has to advance and, eventually, like the wetness of water seems emergent and seems a miracle from the structure of hydrogen and oxygen. But when you understand enough science and the bonding and the angles of the bonding and multiple atoms together, you can explain wetness. And so that's a weak emergence. A strong emergence, say, in principle, you can't explain it. Consciousness seems to be the only thing that at least could be characterized as a strong emergence as far as we know. So that's separate. I couldn't characterize that in either one, so I made that a separate category. It's similar with quantum theories, because it's certainly physical. Because quantum is physical, but yet they have sort of a not the traditional materialistic kinds of theories. What has struck me in how I start the landscape is that what is so remarkable about theories of consciousness is — this is part of its beauty — is that theories are founded at wildly different orders of magnitude, from intercellular quantum activity, Penrose–Hameroff in terms of quantum collapse in microtubules, to a neurobiological circuitry that has to go the global workspace theory, circuits going across the entire brain, to extra brain activity that go beyond the brain that obviously some other theories represent. So you have this huge diversity of orders of magnitude, of primary locus of consciousness, as well as all these different realms of existence. And so that, to me, is the most exciting. So those are the primary categories. Materialism theories with those 10 subcategories and non-reductive physicalism, quantum theories, and then I had panpsychism, monisms, dualisms, and idealisms.

Now, we have another theory, integrated information theory, which is very different. Giulio Tononi has been on Closer to Truth. Christoph Koch is one of the regulars of Closer to Truth over many years and a good friend. So once you've read it, information theory is a major aspect. And so, how do you classify that? Is it a materialism theory? Many people would say it's a panpsychism theory, except the people who promote IIT. Christoph Koch, in particular, has explained why it's not a panpsychist theory. So I can't classify IIT under panpsychism. If it's adherence, it's primary backer to say it's not. I mean, I can't make it. So I had to put it in a separate category. I make the point, though, that so-called between global workspace theory and integrated information theory, the sort of two competitors at the top in some people's thinking, I don't think that's right. I think there are many other theories that deserve that. Making it a two-theory horse race is not correct, even for major theories in philosophy. I mean, I think one of the purposes of the paper is to show the very breadth of thinking and legitimacy of a very large number. So I have integrated information theory as its own separate category. I point out, though, that that does not mean I give it more credibility than, say, global workspace, which is a third level. Because I have materialist theories. Then under materialism, I have neurobiological theories. Under neurobiological, I have global workspace. Because that's the logical flow. That's what it is. I just can't classify properly integrated information theory. So even though integrated information theory is a first-level category and global workspace theory is a third level, that has no impact, I stress, on the likely truth of either one. It's just a classification scheme.

Now, there were two other categories at the end that I have that were not part of the original thing, that are not actual theories in themselves but just ways of thinking. One I've called anomalous and altered state theories. These are theories that will be in the other categories, but they're motivated. Their deep motivation is by observations of the world that seem to be non, that are not normal every day. Parapsychology, psi paranormal, call it what you will, is one category. Another category is out-of-the-body experiences and near-death experiences. I've been historically critical of a lot of these kinds of things, but there's a vast universe of very serious people who really believe this both scientifically and a huge amount of anecdotal. That has to be included. Then we have meditative states, psychedelics, all of these kinds of approaches to consciousness that the adherents believe are determined, that they're just positive, that they really solve the problem, or at least limit the problem. And so that has its own character. There are many, many different subcategories, many theories within that space.

Then the final, I call challenge theories. Those are many individuals who would recognize the difficulty of the problem in a very severe way. Raymond Tallis, who's also one of my intellectual heroes, a British, originally doctor gerontologist and neurologist who is a major now philosopher and literary critic and a good friend, has become a good friend, he is very much anti-neurophilosophy. He doesn't believe any of the materialism theories, but he's a very strong atheist and is not willing. He has what I would call a passionate agnosticism ontologically, but he's not willing to give — even though he has very strong ontological beliefs about atheism, but he recognizes the deep problem. That's the example of Colin McGinn, a philosopher, who famously he's called the Mysterion. That's somebody else's attribution to him. He doesn't really like that term, because he has his own ideas about the nature of consciousness with the difficulty of explaining. So that's the structure. When this came about, and it was sort of forced by different ideas — again, there's no magic in this structure — to me, afterwards when I can look at it, it had a very awe-inspiring feeling. I mean, I was so embedded within the weeds of each. They're not weeds. They're just gems of all these ideas, every one of which I just — when I was working on it, I could be an adherent. I could believe that for a 20 -hour period and then go on to the next. But when you saw it all together — I give great credit to Alex Thomas Moran. We got to know each other through this paper. He reviewed some early drafts. He gave me some excellent suggestions, some theories I did not know, which I've been — he put the structure I have, and I have two figures I had which were linear. One is to list the 10 theories simply, and the other is to list all the theories. The major theories are close to 200. Then within many of them, there are multiple theories so that's why the number gets to about 225. But there's vast, you know. It takes six pages in the paper to just list all the theories in this structure. But Alex then put this structure into a visual image on one page, organizing it with materialism on top, with all the different 10 subcategories. Then the non-material theories belong in a very nice, beautiful, artistic representation. It is, to me, awe-inspiring because every one of the words on that page, on that page we have one word to describe the theory. Often, it's the person's name who came up with it or some designation of that theory. But when you see it on a page, I know I've spent a full day or a full night with all every one of those. I mean, it just takes my breath away when I see it. I hope it gives some sense of the human passion to understand consciousness. And if I can achieve that with this paper, to show the great concern that humanity has had towards this question and what we have in the interest today and the importance of it, that would be an achievement.

I should mention one other thing. That a motivation for the paper, which I haven't mentioned, is that dealing with critical questions in the world today, AI consciousness has hit the news as a big deal. But other questions that are perennial questions like value, meaning and purpose in life or life after death. One subject I've dealt with is virtual immortality. Can we exist in non-physical, in non-biological media, and all of that which many people believe and I've dealt with in the past? These are important questions in society and gives us understanding. My basic thesis is, you cannot even address these questions without dealing with the fundamental nature of consciousness. That almost never happens. Everybody who deals with those questions deals with them at a superficial level.

Brandon: Yeah, you're always smuggling in, it seems, some theory of consciousness, right?

Robert: Exactly. It's smuggled in, and the smuggler doesn't even know they're doing it. That's the issue. And it's legitimate to have a theory, to have an attitude or a belief about AI consciousness, of virtual immortality or life after death. That's fine, but you should know the philosophical foundation on which it sits. That was a major motivation of why I wanted to do this paper as well. I listed earlier two. I said gather all the theories as one, organizing them into some sort of a rational taxonomy, and visualization as two. I should have mentioned a third, and that is addressing these super important, big questions. Each one needs to have a foundation of consciousness theory. And so what I do in the last, I don't know, 20% of the paper is I take each of these major ideas, value-meaning purpose in life, AI consciousness, virtual immortality, and life after death. I could have added free will. Because I think free will is also a hot topic, is also dependent upon your theory of consciousness. But by the end, after 175,000 words, I would pitch. So it still has an open-end of free will having to deal with it. Then for each of them, I gave my idea. So this is the only part of the paper that I put my idea in it. And so for each of these big four areas, I reviewed each of the theories of consciousness and said, what the implication for each would be for like AI consciousness? What would be the likely possibility of AI consciousness under each of these different theories of consciousness? Again, this is put out as a working paper proposition inviting all sorts of critique or additions in the paper. I hope to create a real conversation on these issues.

Brandon: Yeah, I very much hope it sparks that. I mean, just outlining the possibility space here of the immense number of theories, the myriad ways in which we have to grapple with this question is, I think, a huge contribution. Robert, how are you for time? We're about an hour and 15 minutes. Would you have another 15 minutes or so?

Robert: Another 15 is, let's see. Yeah, just maybe a little less.

Brandon: Okay. Well, let's maybe quickly go through some of the other pillars. Because I'd love to just touch very briefly on some of the other themes. But maybe before we go there, I mean, in this work that you've done on consciousness — this is a kind of question I'm going to ask you about your other pillars — what are sort of the theories or the perspectives where you feel or maybe that you think are closer to truth? So is there like maybe a prioritization of the top three contenders in your opinion? As you were trying to live out these theories, were there one or two that you think really stood out to you as, yeah, I could really inhabit this?

Robert: First of all, it's a very fair question. I get asked it all the time, and I hate it. And the reason I hate it is several things. Number one is, if I come out with a view, it would seem to color everything else I've done in the paper. And I didn't want that. In fact, the way I wrote it, it didn't happen. Because when I wrote each theory, I really believed that theory. As I said, for those 20 hours or however long I felt, I really convinced myself that that was right. I had a word limit. I wouldn't go on for thousands of words. Anywhere between, from major theory, 400 or 500 hundred minimum, maybe 1,200 words maximum. I'll also say that the amount of space I deal with the theory is not related to what I believe it's important. It just may relate to my ability to make it concise. Some theories are more complicated, or I'm not able to do it as well. So don't attribute the size of space in the paper to the importance of the theory. There's no relationship. Correlation is zero between amount of space and importance of the theory. So that was point one.

Also, I don't think my opinion is important. People say, have I ever had a spiritual experience or a mystical experience. I should take psychedelics in order to do that. My response is, if I had a mystical experience, a near-death experience, or out-of-the-body experience, or a psychedelic, none of which I've had. I wouldn't believe it. I wouldn't trust it. If I had it myself, I wouldn't trust it.

Brandon: Why not?

Robert: Because I can imagine all sorts of reasons that had occurred. You know, I put my finger in my eye; I see a black spot. It doesn't really exist. There are so many reasons why I don't trust it. Now, maybe I'm wrong. Maybe I'm wrong about that. A lot of that criticism I would get on Closer to Truth often, that I don't have a lot of mystics or people who have had experiences. We had some discussion of that but not a lot. If I had it myself, I wouldn't trust it. So for those reasons, I didn't want to express my own personal feelings about what is. Because number one, I didn't want it to distort what I had. Legitimately, it does not. Because when I wrote each theory, I really treated it as the theory that's right and needed to be given to the world. And so I had this missionary desire every time I wrote a theory to explain to the world why this is the theory that's real. I did that more than 200 times. Secondly, because I don't think my opinion is — even if it were a strong opinion, I don't think it's that important at all. So given that, I began to see when people were asking me that if I don't say something, then it's also going to look like a hidden agenda that everybody has an opinion. So if I don't give an opinion, people will think I have a deep opinion, but I want to keep it secret. So I had this conflict—

Brandon: Yeah, that's a tricky balance.

Robert: —between what to do. So I resolved it finally. Out of 175,000 words, I put 39 words about what I believe with a footnote of another 33 words. So that's 72 words out of 175,000. So that was the way I dealt with what I believe. The point of that is really real, that that's how insignificant my belief is. That's the point. If I wanted to make any point that worked, that was it, that my belief is insignificant. 72 over 175,000, that's the worth of my theory.

Brandon: Well, there's a great humility there. I think there's also a great act of service in offering the world, which is also what you do in Closer to Truth, the faithful representation of the perspectives of others often in their own words and so on. There's a quote from Rilke, which you're probably familiar with. It came to mind as I was going over episodes of your show. Rilke says, “Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books that are now written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given to you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.” And so much of what you're doing, it seems, is to really live the question. I don't know if that resonates with you.

Robert: It does. I've used the term. I used it at the beginning. When we talk luxuriate, people ask me. You know, my wife often says she doesn't care about a lot of these questions. She's a very fine pianist, a professional pianist with lots of recordings and wonderful. But she's not interested in these questions of cosmology or consciousness. She basically said when we met 60 years ago, literally, 60 years ago of this month, that between then and now, I have focused on all these questions. She's never thought any of them. We're both the same place. We were when we started. So I'm no closer to truth than she is after 60 years of my doing all of this. Now, I can't argue with that very much in terms of answers. But I can say, and I can say it very seriously, that I now after Closer to Truth, after doing the consciousness paper, really deeply understand the questions. Not only understand them, but I luxuriate in them. That's my phrase that I use. I love the questions. I immersed in the questions and loved the questions and loved all that they have. Whether that will yield an answer, as the quote you give may do, I don't know. I kind of doubt in our present state of things. We'll learn a lot more obviously, but will we answer these ultimate questions. To me, to luxuriate in the question, to really understand it, is a very important part of the human process. That's why, on Closer to Truth, when we see people from all over the world, from different religions, from different nations, from nations that are at war with one another but everybody has the same passion for these kinds of questions, to me, is a really great hope for humanity.

Brandon: Yeah, there's an unfortunate tendency in a lot of both religion and science to offer answers to people who are not asking the questions. And so I think it's really critical to provoke and raise the questions. At the same time, I wonder, do you think that's enough to contemplate questions? Or do we, at some point, need to make up our minds? So G.K. Chesterton has this quote where he says, "Merely having an open mind is nothing. The object of opening the mind, as of opening the mouth, is to shut it again on something solid.” I wonder if there is also a yearning to arrive at some conclusion or to make a decision towards something? It seems that in some of your episodes, you find yourself dissatisfied, at least, with the answers that some of your interlocutors give you. That itself seems to be kind of moving in the direction of some answer, no?

Robert: I'm not sure it's moving in the direction of an answer. I can tell you that one of my great enjoyments from Closer to Truth is from websites that are atheistic and theistic, both complementing Closer to Truth, saying, "Look. There's some things there that you really don't want to listen to, but it's really, really a good thing." Another similar one is, obviously, on YouTube. You get tens of thousands of comments now. And in several episodes, which would be on a nature of God kind of question or analytic philosophy of religion, global philosophy, in a long series of comments from random people, somebody would say, "Great episode. Really enjoyed it. Kuhn is good and all that." They said, "But Kuhn is a closet atheist trying to undermine the belief of true believers." Then about in the same video, in the same video, 30 comments later, somebody said, "Yeah, Kuhn is good. I've really enjoyed this. I've learned a lot. But he's a closet theist trying to convert the unsuspecting." And it's to the same video.

Brandon: That's a great accomplishment. That's great. You recently shared a story. I wanted to ask about the impact of Closer to Truth. You shared on another interview a story of this woman from Bakersfield who wrote to you. Could you share that story? Because I think it speaks powerfully to your impact.

Robert: Yeah, two comments. I'll tell you another one which I didn't say, I haven't said before. This one woman wrote to an early episode of Closer to Truth on quantum physics. She said something like, "I wish some man would love me the way all those men love quantum physics." So that was one of my favorites. Then the woman from Bakersfield — Bakersfield is not known as the most intellectual community in the world, very fine people. She wrote and said, "I've always thought I've been crazy in my life because I've been interested in these big questions about the universe and life after death and what is it all about. I have six men in my family who are wonderful. I love them. They love me, my husband and five sons. One son runs a garage. One son is a truck driver. We're a great family. We love each other. But all six men think I am nuts because I ask these questions, and I have these secret books that I read. I have always felt like I'm odd, like I'm a strange person. But then in the last year, I have a 13-year-old grandson, my oldest grandson, he has now been asking me these kinds of questions on his own. And so I told him that he and I together should watch Closer to Truth. And so that's what I do." She says, "My grandson and I have bonded by watching Closer to Truth, because we love these questions." And so that to me was mind-boggling. And that's why when professional media people ask me about the demographics of Closer to Truth, so we can do this and that, and what's your demographic, or who do you want to reach, I said I could never give a demographic of this woman in Bakersfield. She would never come up on any kind of analysis. But she's the one I want to reach. Therefore, I do not like the idea of targeting people. Because things that you could put on a resume or on an analytical, don't get to that inner sense of passion and soul or call it what you will or yearning. You can't see that in a resume or any demographic. It's either there, or it's not, or it develops, or whatever. We can't find that.

Again, I had no idea this would happen, but that's what Closer to Truth does. It elicits those kinds of people and gives those kinds of people the feeling that you're not alone. I mean, there are a small band of us who are obsessively passionate about these kinds of questions. And as time has gone on, I think that group has gotten larger. And as we find those kinds of people who are interested in these bigger questions in diverse societies, to me, that's a small hope for humanity that can bring us all together.

Brandon: Yeah, that's really amazing. I mean, I'd like to believe these questions are universal, and they tend to ask themselves through us. We're not concocting them, right? And why it is that some of us don't ask these questions? My suspicion is, there's too many distractions or other things that get in the way. Maybe this will be my last question for you. Have you ever felt frustrated or disillusioned in your pursuit of this yearning for truth? How did you overcome those, if at all? Then what advice would you have for anyone else who perhaps wants to pursue the questions but either is frustrated or just has too many obstacles in the way?

Robert: You know, I have to be honest. It has just been a wonderful gift than it's been an exhilarating experience to be honored and privileged to be able to speak to many people, to be able to think about these things. I've been very fortunate in life on various levels, family-wise and then financially able to spend time on this. I tell the story. People say, maybe, you know, what is my profession? I say my profession, what I do is Closer to Truth, of seeking these big questions. I said the problem has been the world and its lack of wisdom doesn't pay for that. They don't pay any money for it. In fact, I have to support it to some degree and to some large degree. So I had to find an avocation, something that I could do on the side, that the world pays a lot more. That's called investment banking. So, you know, I picked up this avocation, which I happen to be a little bit good at, in order to fund my habit of Closer to Truth. So it has not been the case of feeling frustrated or stymied and not coming up with an answer. It's really been an honor and a privilege and a responsibility to luxuriate in the questions and to bring forth the best thinking of humanity on these critical issues.

Brandon: Well, I'm deeply grateful that you pursued this path. You've been such an inspiration. Robert, thanks so much for joining us on the show. Where can we direct our viewers and listeners? And if there's anything else on the horizon for you that you want to point our audience to, please let us know.

Robert: Just Closer to Truth is closertotruth.com and Closer To Truth, the YouTube channel, are both there. There's a huge amount of resources there. We look for feedback from everyone and hope more and more people can enjoy and come to appreciate the great questions that unify all human beings of existence and sentience.

Brandon: Yeah, wonderful. We'll put a link to the article as well in the show notes. 

Robert: Good, thank you.

Brandon: Yeah, thanks again Robert, it's been such a pleasure. 

Robert: Brandon, it's always a pleasure. I look forward to more.

(outro)

Brandon: All right, folks. That's a wrap for this episode. If you enjoyed the episode, please share it with someone who would find it of interest. Also, please subscribe and leave us a review if you haven't already. Thanks, and see you next time.